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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

I should like to speak to Amendment No. 61, which I tabled very much as a follow-up to a point I raised at Second Reading in relation to interspecies embryos. The point is simply that we currently lack an ethical or moral compass for decision-making in relation to this type of entity—a compass of the kind that the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, gave us in the 1980s and which subsequently formed the framework for the 1990 Act. I find the absence of such a framework in this context extremely unsatisfactory. Some fundamental ethical questions present themselves. Is the ethical status of an entity which is 99 per cent human on an equal footing with the status of something that is 50 per cent human? Are there particular ethical issues that need to be borne in mind when decisions are taken about the creation and use of a true hybrid embryo, as distinct from the creation and use of a cytoplasmic hybrid embryo? If there is a sensitivity about the use of completely human embryos, as the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, said there should be, is the sensitivity associated with the use of hybrid embryos the same or is it greater or smaller? Indeed, does the special ethical status of the human embryo extend also to embryos that are less than 100 per cent human? None of these questions admits of answers that are immediate or straightforward. The Government’s own position on the subject of true hybrid embryos has already shifted. That may be seen by some as good but, viewed in another light, it is rather worrying because it indicates that Ministers had few ethical or practical pointers to guide them in the first instance. When the Chief Medical Officer gave evidence to the Joint Committee on the subject of true hybrids—that is, hybrids created using human gametes and the gametes of an animal—he was asked to clarify the ethical distinction between a cytoplasmic hybrid and a true hybrid. He said this about the true hybrid: "““The process involved and the resulting entity is very different in character to the first. I am surprised that you cannot see that. I think the outside world would see a big distinction””." Nevertheless, the Joint Committee could not see the distinction and concluded that there was no valid reason to exclude certain categories of interspecies embryo from the scope of the licensing arrangements while including others. If we attempt to look for answers to some of the ethical questions about interspecies embryos, there is one aspect that I do not think has yet been mentioned. Noble Lords will remember that arising out of the special ethical status of the human embryo, which the Baroness, Lady Warnock, helpfully defined, has emerged an understanding about research projects involving such embryos. The understanding has been that, wherever possible, embryos used for research should be those left over from IVF treatment which would otherwise be destroyed. The utilitarian approach says that, even though these are human embryos with special ethical status, it is ethically justifiable to use them in research as a means to an end, rather than to destroy them, so long as the end potentially conduces to the public good in the way that the law allows. If one looks at the statistics for research projects approved by the HFEA, the vast majority have involved embryos that have originally been created for treatment purposes but have not, in the event, been needed. Research projects for which embryos have been expressly created from gametes have been comparatively few in number. One reason for this surely has to be the greater ethical sensitivity associated with the deliberate creation of a human life form expressly for the purposes of research. Following on from that, the point that has not been made about the provisions for interspecies embryos is that, of necessity, they envisage the creation of embryos expressly for research. These embryos are clearly not left over from anything else; they have to be manufactured. That basic point should not be ignored for the purposes of the ethical framework, and that is why I suggested in my amendment two things. First, we need a set of principles that should inform all decisions relating to any research application involving interspecies embryos. Secondly, those principles should require the regulator to consider a number of factors, over and above those normally considered, before a licence for the creation of an interspecies embryo is issued. These are that the research project in question should be designed to fill an important gap in scientific knowledge—important in the sense of its potential benefit to man—that there should be a reasonable chance that the project will be successful in achieving its aims; and, lastly, that there should be no practicable alternative to the creation and use of an interspecies embryo. For a bona fide project, those additional hurdles should not present a difficulty, but they, or something like them, are I think essential if the sensitivities relating to interspecies embryos are to be paid any sort of respect. I hope that the Minister will agree to reflect on these issues between now and Report and that we can move towards a more considered position in relation to the ethical underpinning of these provisions.